The present invention relates to a sales data registration apparatus including a register terminal and an electronic cash register.
In a large supermarket, a two-cashier electronic cash register system is employed to smoothly perform the resgistration at a checkout counter. The two-cashier electronic cash register system comprises one register terminal for entering only sales data such as the department (DPT) code of each article for sale, the total sales amount for each customer, the number of articles sold, etc., and one electronic cash register for settling the sales transaction, on the basis of the total amount registered by the register terminal and represented by the sales data. A pair of a register terminal and an electronic cash register are arranged one behind the other.
With the two-cashier electronic cash register system, a customer first goes to the register terminal located at the sales area side, in order to have purchase articles registered. She or he then pays money at the electronic cash register located at the exit side, and receives a receipt.
The two-cashier electronic cash register system, however, has the following drawback:
An individual customer often purchases a larger number of articles in a supermarket than in retail stores which often carry only a specific (i.e. narrower) range of articles. Consequently, the time spent paying money and receiving change at the electronic cash register is inevitably shorter than that spent registering articles at the register terminal. Therefore, customers may have to form a long queue at the register terminals, while the cashiers at the electronic cash registers must wait a relatively long time for the arrival of these same customers. As a result, smooth and efficient sales registration cannot be achieved.